1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wearable monitoring devices in communication with telemetry systems with selectable wireless communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telemetry systems can be implemented to acquire and transmit data from a remote source. Some telemetry systems provide information about a user's activities.
It is becoming commonplace to use wireless packet data service networks for effectuating data sessions with. In some implementations, unique identifications (ID) need to be assigned to the devices in order to facilitate certain aspects of service provisioning, e.g., security, validation and authentication, et cetera. In such scenarios, it becomes imperative that no two devices have the same indicium (i.e., collision). Further, provisioning of such indicia should be flexible so as to maintain the entire pool of indicia to a manageable level while allowing for their widespread use in multiple service environments.
The telemetry system may incorporate a wireless technology such as wireless fidelity (WiFi); infrared (IR); or ultrasound in order to facilitate finding an object and/or data transmission. As an exemplary implementation, a medical telemetry system can be implemented to remotely monitor the cardiac electrical activity of a plurality of ambulatory patients while they remain within a predefined coverage area. The medical telemetry system may also be implemented to locate and track patients within the coverage area.
One problem with current wireless communications is that a user is typically dependent on a single interface which communicates over a wireless link that can be lost when traveling out of range or in a null coverage area, or lost due to congestion. Although other communication networks may be available, the wireless interface is not able to make use of these other networks. For example, a device communicating with a network utilizing a code division multiple access (CDMA) link may not be able to transition to another network such as a wireless local area network (WLAN) when the CDMA link becomes unavailable. Although some wireless devices may implement more than one transceiver for communicating with different communication networks, these devices do not readily transition between the transceivers, nor do they exhibit flexibility in assessing the worth of the network. Another problem with current wireless communications is that the network connection is not optimized for the application being used. For example, the same network connection for voice communications may not be suitable for video or data transfer.
There is a need for improved systems and methods for conducting wireless communications. There is a further need for wireless devices to transition between communication networks when a network becomes unavailable. There is yet another need for wireless devices to select between available connections.